The Red Green Show

The Red Green Show is a Canadian half-hour sketch comedy television show produced by Steve Smith and Rick Green. Smith stars as the titular character, Red Green, and the show also features many other characters. The Red Green Show is a self-proclaimed parody of many country fishing and handyman TV shows. The show ran in Canada between 1991 and April 7, 2006 and had exactly 300 half-hour episodes in total, including several holiday specials. The show was also broadcast on PBS in the United States, beginning with a test run in the early 1990's on WTVS, the PBS affiliate in Detroit, Michigan, and reruns of the show are still broadcast in some areas. For a brief time, the show was also broadcast on Foxtel in Australia and Mercury Television in New Zealand.

A full-length feature film based on The Red Green Show, Duct Tape Forever, was also produced, and the entire series is available on DVD.

Format
The main setting for The Red Green Show is the Possum Lodge, in which a television show by the same name is being produced. While the real show encompasses fictional characters and settings, the fictional show is structured as a fishing and handyman show in which Red is the star. The fictional show is produced and directed by Red's nephew Harold until the 1999 season, when Harold leaves Possum Lodge to work at a company in the city. In most episodes, the plot of the fictional show is the same as that for the real show. However, some episodes (particularly in the first season, where Harold is critical of Red's "boring" stories) center more around the fictional show's production than the stated plot or storyline. For example, in The Network Deal, Harold attempts to line up a contract between the show and a major American television network, and in the premiere episode of the 8th season, Red agrees to start paying Harold to produce the show.

Production Notes
The Red Green Show was produced for 300 half-hour episodes, first on CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario, And then, on CFPL-TV in London, Ontario and then, by the Global Television Network, to finally end on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the 1997 season, its seventh onward.

The series finale, Do As I Do, was filmed on November 5, 2005, at Showline Studios in the Port Lands neighborhood of Toronto, since CBC was, at the time, locking out Canadian Media Guild members, thus rendering the usual Canadian Broadcasting Centre soundstages unusable.

In the fall of 2014, the transcripts for the 2003-2005 seasons were released for pay download on the Red Green Shop. Since then, transcripts for previous seasons have been released for pay download as well.